Link to our fundraiser

Synopsis

This is a fundraiser to buy equipment to launch an audio-books radio station on the FM dial and internet streaming.

Why

We look at the state of education today. Why aren’t people graduating from highschool? Why are colleges having to do remedial work? And what about the people who are the product of this system over the last few decades and are now out trying to make their living? We don’t blame teachers or administrators. Some of the best minds in the country are interested in making our education system work. But we want to do something that may help.

Would an increased familarity with classic works of literature lead to a broader interest in literacy, a better understanding of history and more appreciation for people of other places and times?

It is a sure bet that more rock/country/hip-hop/sports/political-talk on the radio, more of the same stuff playing today, leaves most of radio out. It’s just another entertainment backwater. Public radio is a great source for national news and some insightful and interesting programming.

What

We want a public-radio feel with a classic literature content. We would love to have commentary, interviews with authors, editorials which put current events in the light of history, local works, local authors… there’s a whole world out there which is waiting to be opened up.

We have a population we can serve: folks who don’t read for one reason or another, those folks who don’t go to the library and have no idea of the treasures between book covers. And there are people who are just too busy trying to keep up with the world, we’ll serve them a bit of poetry during their drive to work.

The content is ready. Volunteers have prepared an incredible resource at librivox.org.

Who

We are a husband and wife in Columbus, MS. We work. We don’t have time to save the world. But maybe we can focus enough of the random energy of humanity on our corner of the world to get this project going. We registered a non-profit corporation, Classic Book Radio with this specific goal: to improve literacy through the broadcast of classic works of literature.

We have experience in IT and radio and we love books.

You

If you are interested in radio, would like to see a new format on the air;

if you are interested in books and want other people to love them like you do;

if you are interested in education and want to help push back the dark cloud of ignorance

please contribute to our project.

Less than a week left in our crowdfunding campaign at indiegogo.com

If you have not contributed, please do so.  Even $10 or $5 will be appreciated. We’ve got a stylish T-shirt coming out, so go for the $40 level and you’ll be looking good.

Also, I’m hoping we can get someone to go for the “60 seconds about my favorit book” perk. We have a lot of time in the radio day to fill up, and I’d like to hear your voice on there.

We participate in Twitter these days, trying to build some kind of a following.

What we hope to do is use Twitter to put out our schedule as the radio day progresses.  But that doesn’t happen yet.

They are doing TwitterFiction today, so I put in my 2 cents (read from bottom to top):

Measuring Results

The mission of Classic Book Radio is to improve literacy by broadcasting readings of classic works of literature over the radio.

I was looking at some grant organizations the other day, on websites.  One of the issues they bring up is having a way to measure the effect of the project.

We do have a bit of a handle on local literacy through success rates at the local schools.  Lowndes County School District is required to measure their student’s proficiency at reading.  The most recent figures you can find here.  The schools in our listening area are West Lowndes Elementary, Middle and High.

For people above school age, there is a national estimate of literacy, by county, here.  But that does not seem to be repeated very often.

A direct poll of the population would be nice.  That would cost a lot of $$!

To me it is a sensible proposition:  People hear a good story and at minimum they are then more “culturally literate” about some of the best literature ever produced in the English language.  They hear new words, expanding their vocabulary.  And they feel more comfortable picking up a book on their own.

A next step after hearing a story would be to read along.  Our plan is to facilitate that by publishing our program in advance and by the happy coincidence of having the public domain texts all available for free on the net.  I guess we could try to measure that by looking at download rate for the text files.  I’ll have to ponder on that idea a bit.

I believe there is a correlation between literacy and economic success.  If that is true, a long-range measure would be to see our neighborhood prosper.